NATASHA
by Kuro Guardian
Summary: Actual!Natasha is kind of long dead and this Natasha may have been literally reprogrammed and tony doesn't actually handle it super well, but he's not enough of a bastard to strip away N.A.T.A.S.H.A.'s personhood. Also, Peggy thinks his parenting impulses should definitely be indulged.
1. Chapter 1

It's always the fucking assassins. Which probably sounds weird, but like the kidnapping thing from when he was a kid assassins were always around. The problem, of course, is that this kid is – well this kid is an actual child. Like if she's older than 14 he'll eat his fucking hat or he will once he buys one. Actually, he'd probably look awesome with a hat so why doesn't he have one? Wait – no wait – okay baby!Assassin currently bleeding out in his shop. Which is kind of his fault – or yeah no entirely his fault, but in his defense, she was trying to kill him.

Still, he has a troubled enough mind already without dead baby assassin children lying around. Sadly he is not the kind of doctor she needs, and it doesn't seem like she wants the kind of doctor she needs. Also, it's pretty obvious that she doesn't trust him, and that's actually not surprising or anything because severe gut wounds are not trust-inducing. Still – oh wait, "Jarvis please explain to tiny!Assassin that I'm not currently trying to kill her, but she's gonna die if she doesn't let me help?" If tiny!Assassin's face is anything to go by she can speak at least some English, well that or like most people she fails to enjoy his amazing charm.

"I am not tiny – I am a growing child. What is your excuse Stark?" Aw, tiny!Assassin has jokes and spirit, which is good because so much blood. "Awesome! I really love your moxie, but dead children bum me out so I kind of need you to let me stop the bleeding. Some time yesterday would be pretty fucking awesome." tiny!Assassin is adorable. Look at her frowning murderously while wrinkling her nose like a sneezing kitten – thank god she can't read his mind or he might be in serious danger right now. "No! I do not trust you – you shot me." While she does make an excellent point, "That's because you were trying to stab me. I have a thing about stabbing – but I can't tell you that story until you're at least a billyion years older. My standards are low, but they do actually exist, unlike unicorns."

And that is thankfully when Jarvis decided to interfere by sending out the clowns – Dummy, Butterfingers, and U. miniature!Murderbot actually lets a smile flit across her face as the bots chirp worryingly at her and Dummy tries (and fails) to put a blanket on her. "As you can see Miss there are many present right now who would be distressed should you continue to refuse treatment and… expire." Blinking up at the ceiling the kid frowns and then sighs. "I thought you were a bad man because they said you _enjoy_ children but they lied again. They always lie." Yeah, that's not gonna work. Depressed children are so not his cup of tea. Still blood loss and imminent rampant infection first – then making a smile stick on that cute little face.

The kid, Natasha, is asleep and as comfortable as he can make her. She needs a doctor, but she'd managed to convince him that would be a god awful idea. He could maybe hit up Aunt Peggy's old posse, but he didn't trust them nearly as far as tech could blow their bloody gimlets. So here he is trying to figure out what is going on inside her head. Her guts are fine, almost supernaturally so considering how fast they're healing – her head is a very different story. Apparently the so-called Red Room doesn't quite trust their assets to come back without some kind of leash, in this case, the lease is a biological failsafe that gradually melts their brains unless periodically treated.

She ought to have more time to get back to her handler, but apparently, his security was just that good that she has no time left. And that's how she landed a gut shot and now he actually feels bad for having decent protection – even though it just saved his ass from an assassination attempt. Whatever, he just needs to figure out how to save this – something to do with the neural gear he was playing around with? Or maybe having another look at the biosynthetic nonsense he and Gregory somehow slapped together a few years back? Or that thing that could maybe help the profoundly retarded if he could just make it all click? Maybe – maybe all of the above? "Jarvis, open a new file on our private servers – Project Natasha."

There's not enough time and she would rather literally die than be taken back. So he pulls out something that will some time in the future become an instrument named B.A.R.F. and he "downloads" her mind or at least the data points that make it into a separate private, hidden server just like the one JARVIS lives on. He scraps the original project Natasha and freezes the remains. The next year and a half are seen through a haze of alcohol and poor life choices. And then he nearly runs down a seven-year-old, and as he sits in the street rocking the kid he remembers holding a shivering weeping mess of fourteen-year-old.

He leaves the media to have their field day and throws more money than 90% of the world will see in a lifetime at the understandably pissed family. Stane can go fuck himself, but since he needs something for the boys in New York Tony tosses him a pile of blueprints. Then he turtles himself away in one of the dozen houses he has under other names, this one is in the countryside of a tiny country with an impossible name. He won't leave here for a half dozen years.

Even with freezing, especially with freezing there should be damage – but whatever the Red Room did to her body has kept it completely intact. With the rather pointed exception of her brain, but that's what the injection he's about to give her is for. Between the neural gear, this synthetic growth formula, and the data he gathered in the rush to save her Tony should be able to re-grow what was lost. Hopefully, it doesn't just end up getting real Pet Cemetery up in here. "Okay, Jarvis start it up." It'll be hours yet before there are any real results, so he pulls out his laptop and calls up F.R.I.D.A.Y. – friendly remnant of an intelligent, delightful, assassinating youth – who may or may not be the result of drunkenly fucking with Natasha's data points on a certain private server.

"Okay, now open your hand for me. Great! Now close it slowly, that's great. Can you wiggle your toes for me? Now point them straight like a ballerina. Good job!" Reflexes are good, eyesight is great, hearing is perfect, no unexplained weaknesses. "Okay, I'm probably jinxing things but I think the operation was a success! Then again JARVIS was mostly in charge of this so of course, it would be." And there's that almost smile he's so fond of. While JARVIS and the bots coo over the kid Tony goes back over the data while wondering if he should introduce Natasha to FRIDAY. It'd be weird, wouldn't it? It'd be weird like introducing JARVIS to Jarvis, but more so because these two kind of sort of share brain? Or something like that – either way, there doesn't need to be a rush. There's time.

There's no time and he could scream because it was just one stupid godforsaken meeting. And there hadn't been any sign of trouble or JARVIS would have said something. Did he say something, and thankfully or not the phone doesn't show any missed calls. So no they were completely blindsided and the bots are tucked into the panic room and JARVIS has protected himself and cut off FRIDAY from everything. But NATASHA is gone – they took her and he wasn't. He promised she'd be safe and he hired a dance tutor and they were building a dance studio and she loved Cadbury eggs and silk made her itch and he promised she'd be safe. He should have put a tracer on her, but they'd know if he did right?

Another decade spent partying and not touching anything because he loses anything he puts his hands on. And some days he spends patting Dummy and wondering why the stupid thing is still bugging him. If Obie wonders why he's a little sharper in tone or a little less concerned with pleasing people he doesn't ask. And meanwhile Tony is happily, if quietly, dissecting the Red Room and everyone involved. There are new bots capable of stealth and massive explosions and surgical precision. They're the best and sometimes he wonders what it'd be like to have a suit built like them. But that's not important right now and he needs to find her.

She would be 24 or so now(older actually, but she was frozen six years). And he knows what she should look like because he has JARVIS run the aging simulator every year on the same day. She would be a beautiful young woman, and it hurts him that she isn't with him. It hurts him that he failed her, it hurts him that he never got to give her the papers. Papers certifying that Natasha Maria Stark is the daughter of Anthony Edwin Stark as approved by the courts (and his blood used as the base of the formula). And he buries the hurt under an empty smile while calmly informing his honey-bear that no he is not producing the fucking Jericho because he has enough blood on his hands.

And one day he is looking the one who stole his tiny!Assassin right in her perfect china blue eyes. "She's dead. I watched the light fade from her eyes as her brains dribbled out onto the sidewalk." He's seen corpses with more life to them than this girl – of course taking her in hadn't been easy or peaceful. She's got maybe a few hours left to her, and most of them will be spent in suffering. Oh, well. "Who?" Something that could be called a smile curls about her cupid bow lips, "A S.H.I.E.L.D. sniper codenamed Hawkeye. He never misses." Neither do his drones and a week later there are smoking craters where a circus and a farmhouse used to be.

He doesn't build the Jericho, he doesn't go to Afganistan and so it comes to him in the form of a literal knife in the back. "I don't- " And now Obie's blood is all over him (and the bastard might have nicked his heart), but he makes it to the lab and the unaltered base of NATASHA's Compound (it's a working title) is waiting for him. "Sir, there might be some complications." The room is darkening, "J I'm pretty sure I'm dying and being dead is more of a bitch than handling complications." He has just enough time to regret his haste (the shot feels like a literal kick in the chest) before blacking out with a taste of cinnamon and ozone in his mouth.

"Sir, I am **not** a doctor." "I-" "And neither are you a medical doctor." But he's not super-human and his body can't keep up with its needs – so he needs something else, something more. The glowing sphere looks like some sort of heavenly pearl all smooth white surface and glowing blue lights and a soft silver aura. The perfect marriage of ARC technology and biosynthetic patchwork (because he's an engineer – not a bioengineer) it fits in his hand and needs to be in his chest. Sadly he might be a bit traumatized about the whole – literal backstabbing thing so trust is in super, duper nonexistent supplies right now.

"I can build a doctor, but first I need a babysitter for the company. Also, we still have that court case don't we?"

Between the camera footage and digital/physical proof of Obadiah's shady ass dealings, it doesn't take a fancy lawyer to get him off. Of course, fancy lawyers always help and also he may or may not look like he's currently dying (which he kind of is). Speaking of which his new assistant slash paperwork monkey Pepper Potts has really taken the whole "recently escaped a chemo party at Auschwitz" look he's rocking really fucking well.

Well enough that she didn't even begin to hesitate reading him the riot act when he mentioned the home operation thing. "Do you even know what surgery actually entails?! Do you know just how bad an infection can get? What if there's a massive complication? Are you insane?" He's not going to get a better opening, "Well according to the shrink I built myself seven years ago… yes. Something about manic episodes and depressive periods and a pathological sense of guilt… which is better than I thought it'd be. I was seriously worried about getting shuffled into the Cluster II club with like BPD or Clinical Narcissism or something."

Aw, Pepper does not look good gaping, but she's still adorable. Anyway, "Also I have a doctor – I named him Boy Wonder because reasons. Like Watson was already taken because other people think they know how to build AIs. So… I do actually have a medical type person who legitimately knows everything medicine including the most recent published works. This is fine Pepper." It's not actually, but it's not like he's leaving much behind – one best friend forever, one kick-ass assistant, one awesome driver/friend, a crazy little digital/mechanical family, and a name soaked in blood. Also, like fucktons of money to charity and probably a few illegitimate children somewhere.

Pepper is kind of hardheaded so she calls in the Big Guns – Mrs. Rhodes. "That is not fair Pep. However, well done traitorous student, five thousand years in the dungeon and no biscuits for you." Still, the great thing about the Rhodes family is that they understand – that there is legitimately nothing they can do to change his mind once set. So a couple of days later half the Rhodes family is camping out at his place and the house smells of awesome food and Pepper apparently, has an impressively profane mouth. The lab is as cold as it'll go and the best mechanical doc that genius and deep pockets can build is warming up and Rhodney is being super lame because this probably isn't gonna kill him. "Remember that one time in Germany? I'm like a damn spider – except I totally need my head bro. Heads are super important, I think. I forgot to major in biology." Rhodes has the best laugh once you get him going.

The sucky thing about keeping all this a secret is that nobody will know just how fucking amazing his AIs are. Also, he is like such a fucking genius man – but anyone with brains already knows that. Aside from not looking like he's a step from death he has a hatch in his chest not unlike some kind of android. And of course, Rhodney hasn't stopped making robot jokes since he caught sight of it. Mama Rhodes just wants to know if it'll rust or needs to be specially cleaned and Pepper is completely ignoring it because quote, "my tolerance for weird things is remarkably low all things considered". Which is just silly because fuck knows she works for him, and normality is his least applicable skill – still she deserves a reward for putting up with everything. Sadly she'll have to make due with being CEO of Stark Industries. The switch will go over as soon as she finishes firing the current board of directors because they are all obviously traitorous swine.

It's half a year later and the Red Room is dead, but Hydra needs to bite it because they owe him for his mom. Perhaps more importantly, SHIELD is at the top of his shit list because he found a great deal of deeply disturbing things in their records. This would include the ordered assassination of NATASHA, the video of his parents' murder, and a plan for dealing with one Peggy Carter. Which is why she's lying on the table that saw NATASHA brought back to life instead of buried in a hospice somewhere. He isn't going to fail again, Aunt Peggy is going to get better and he's going to keep her safe. And all she has to do in return is explain how the hell HYDRA burrowed it's creepy ass deep inside her secret clubhouse.

"I don't know! I thought I had left it in good hands, but I'm only human as we can see here. Or at least I was – what exactly was in that needle you jabbed into my brain?" Details are for good little secret agents and Aunt Peggy has been very bad. "Show me yours and I'll show you mine – or I could just play the damn tape. JARVIS? Hit it!" Watching her face pale should be more enjoyable, except it's obvious that she knows exactly dick about any of this.

"Steve thought Barnes died. He's alive? We have to help him!" Okay so apparently he's running a rescue mission now – neato! Barnes is still getting a repulsor shot to the dick, or at least he is if it hasn't frozen solid and broken off by now. "Can I still burn down the clubhouse?" The look of fondness is something he's really missed, "There are still good people in SHIELD, but yes – just make sure to use the good petrol."

Before he gets a chance tall, dark, and pirate-y shows up in his house with his shoes on the good furniture. The non-descriptive joker studying a very expensive Old Masters painting is the fucker whose been stalking Pepper for the last month. Groovy. "Uncle Nicky! Agent Stalker! Why aren't you dead?!" That last question is more for JARVIS than them, but Aunt Peggy ends up answering. "I asked Junior not to because we can't afford to fuck this up. If we do our job right we can cripple HYDRA permanently, besides which there is information you need to know." Information that will have to wait because a redhead carrying a tea service has stolen all the air from the room… not literally, but it's as good an excuse for him fainting as he's likely to get.

"Is there a reason you have an airlock in your chest?"

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

As far as basic things go like meeting new people who are actually people you knew years ago because you brought them back from the dead with SCIENCE! Tony is the absolute tops. Well not really, but that isn't important right now. He can totally explain any number of things later, but right now the important question is how to destroy Hydra and that means studying how far it's rot extends into SHIELD and major governments of the world. It also means making a list of possible plants/turncoats/extortion victims while also having a gander at this whole "Inhumans" project HYDRA has such a time hard-on for.

It would probably help if Uncle Nicky would stop trying to bogart everything – Fort Awesome does not recognize any authority outside of Tony fucking Stark. "Look here Stark. This isn't a damn game. If you want to help maybe make yourself useful -" Tasers trump pirates good to know. "Good job Dum-e. No, I don't want a smoothie. Give it to Long John Unconscious over there." Agent Stalker does a very tepid defense of Fury while Natasha continues to case his lab with a small frown on her face. Which is probably bad…wait. Definitely bad- like just the worse. Oh well.

No time to worry about what she might or might not remember because the rot goes deep indeed. Only a third of SHIELD's overall personnel are rogue, but that third tends to be in administrative positions. Worse it seems like a fourth of America's congress is in HYDRA's back pocket along with a simply disgusting portion of the EU. The World Security Council is literally all HYDRA stooges. How the fuck does that even work? It's like some horrible Ubisoft game except nobody bothered to give him kickass Parkour skills or the ability to leap off tall buildings and survive landing in strategically place haystacks.

Speaking of Assassins – Natasha has a distressing attachment to a certain Winter Soldier. Which, like okay, she is an adult type person but she is going to be very disappointed in the certain aspects of the relationship because he is definitely going to fire a repulsor blast or eight into a certain Soldier's groin. However, he does promise not to murder Barnes. Or at least he promises to try not to murder Barnes and really that is much more then he should be promising. Barnes murdered his parents and extenuating circumstances aside that's not really something you forgive or forget or maybe he's just like spectacularly bitter. Eh, por que no tres?

* * *

In a different world Project Insight would have had to wait, but in this one, Tony Stark puts his entire weight behind it. Which is weird considering his stance on weapons following the events with Stane, but people are forever underestimating him and so no flags are raised. In the meanwhile, Tony works on the BARF device and manages to get de-programming HYDRA assets down to an art. This is deeply unfortunate because it means he will almost definitely have no excuse to fricassee a certain MIA soldier, but at least Aunt Peggy and Natasha will be happy. Which is good because the plan he has for bringing down SHIELD is not going to make them happy like at all. Oh, well.

As it is three years pass before the helicarriers are complete. This is just enough time to de-program everyone salvageable while also using their knowledge to build a rather specific list. One he replaces the original list with (And why the hell is he only at number 50 on the list? Does no one understand his brilliance?) right after tracking down a certain bunker and performing a rather gleeful decommission of the ZOLA program. In hindsight, he maybe should have told someone where he'd be, but he has long ago learned that people don't like to let him do anything fun.

"I don't see the problem really. It isn't like anyone was there except me and the Legion and whatever the hell was on that ancient ass computer system." That is probably not the best thing to say, but he has been putting in his leg days so he probably has a chance of escaping… Also, there might have been some pretty decent side effects following him injecting the Compound (working titles take time okay). That said he probably should mention he's a technopath or that he seems to be able to generate force fields on the fly. He isn't going to because he has trust issues, but the last time he was trusting he literally got backstabbed so whatever.

Besides, it's nearly showtime. "I should have made popcorn or hot wings." Natasha seems to be studying him again with that weirdly judgmental stare she's so fond of. Probably learned it from Agent Stalker or whatever. Either way, the clock hits 3:14 and people start dying. Thankfully the precision upgrades he gave the carrier manages to keep collateral damage down, but it's still a pretty bad scene. Bad enough that it's only because HYDRA is involved that he manages to keep his head attached to his neck. Well, that and the news that so many government officials around the world were apparently super-secret-supernatural Nazis. Also, he managed to gain a lot of favor with the kill switches he had installed on all the carriers.

While Pepper deals with the fallout Tony begins to make plans or he would but him and Natasha seem to be stuck in a bit of a rut. She wants to talk about the Insight thing and he'd rather not, but he also wants to know everything about her while not letting on that he has some serious stalker tendencies. It's a bit of a mess and it is not helped along by his need to avoid the Pirate, the Aunt, and Agent Stalker. In other news, he can apparently make solid holograms with like sound and shadows and everything. He really should mention these new abilities to someone, but that just sounds like he's asking to be horribly betrayed so maybe not.

It all comes to a head with her blocking him against the cabinet (they are the same damn height… how the hell is he this fucking short) and demanding to know why she remembers his scent and how he knows she loves blackberry jam and that she's allergic to silk and hates the color yellow. Strangely enough, it is a bit awkward explaining to someone that you are kind of their father/creator and once upon a time assassination target who failed to save their life once. She blinks and he notices she has what look like circuits traced in gold inside her eyes. That probably isn't normal, is it? "If all of that is true then why do I not remember you?" And that is a damn good question. A damn good question that a certain Shaft impersonator and his creepy Agent Smith partner need to answer.

* * *

Holding an icepack to his functional eye Fury has the audacity to actually pout like a damn child. "Look Stark it wasn't a conspiracy or anything. When Clint took her down she sustained a lot of head trauma. Imagine our surprise to have her back up and running ops not even an entire week later. So we had Clint try to bring her in and that's when we noticed that something had been done to her even if we weren't sure what." None of those words sounds like an explanation, but Tony is a patient man of deep restraint – and Natasha looks like she wants to land at least a few more hits on her old boss. Who is he to disagree?

Fury being smarter than he looks quickly puts his hands up and spills about the reprogramming they might possibly have given her during those first weeks when she was so out of it. "You fucked with my mind?" Lucky for Fury, Coulson (and Agent Stalker sounds so much cooler) steps up and takes the fall. "You were a valuable asset and we could not have you returning to the Red Room so we decided to flip you over to our side. I won't apologize for that, but I will apologize for not making the decision to return you to Stark's care. Then again it apparently worked out for the best overall." As it turns out Coulson is a lot tougher than he looks, but he also bleeds like a stuck pig.

* * *

Considering the damage Stark did to HYDRA he isn't the least bit surprised that Barnes comes knocking. Not literally of course, but he does show up and that is a good thing. For one it saves on time and effort tracking him down, beating him up, and dragging him back. For another … oh! For another, it means Tony can try out his new defense system – which is great because he really fucking hates Barnes. And that would probably be unfair if Tony hadn't had to crawl through the heads of a metric ton of brainwashed operatives. The system they used to turn people wasn't fucking magic - it was unimaginable pain plus drugs and stimuli-based training. Doing what you're told stops the pain, disobeying cranks it up. Meaning that some people barely needed his help to toss their programming while others needed all the help he could give and barely managed to slip their leases.

Now sure it's understandable to not want to suffer, but Barnes had taken it to an entirely new level. And somewhere inside Tony, a deeply angry child screams in outrage over losing another childhood hero. A childhood hero so afraid he didn't even think twice about murdering his old friend and said friend's wife and therefore leaving their son in the clutches of a greedy prick like Stane. So yeah, this was going to be fun and since Barnes is just stuffed full of Super Serum then that means Tony probably won't end up breaking his promise not to kill him. Best plan ever.

* * *

Thirty minutes later Tony is stepping over the twitching remnants of a Legion member and dodging around hanging cords with sparking ends. On his hand is his new prototype glove which normally looks like a watch. Peering around a corner he sees Barnes being pinned to the wall by something that isn't quite a spider mecha, but only because the poor thing seems to be missing some legs. As the glove's repulsor gears up with a whine Barnes looks him in the eye and begins struggling harder. "Yeah, you know what's coming, don't you Bucky?" Barnes stops struggling and frowns as though confused. Good that will make this a lot more fun. "Here's hoping you never wanted kids."


End file.
